Poems by Hannah Rodabaugh
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Vasco da Gama
by Hannah Rodabaugh
Hannah is an environmental writer who lives near the Boise River in southwest Idaho. She is passionate about the native plants and birds found in the sagebrush steppe habitat outside her home.
Each spider
is a tiny
Vasco da Gama,
a freaky frisson.
You find them
on walls, walks,
water glasses,
bottles, beetles,
bric-a-brac.
Your back shelf
of books,
old medals,
and dusty,
dilapidated dolls,
all webbed over
with the
explorer’s impulse
to map the world
with thread.
A spider
measures
the world by
what it can
crawl over
in the dark.
Your leg is
a great
felled oak,
your heart,
a beating
granite boulder
to surmount.
Each part of you
has been
summited, claimed
by a spider
in the dark
question mark
of night.
© Hannah Rodabaugh